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FRI, APR 26, 2024
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Rev. Cecil Williams (1929-2024): 'He never gave up on anybody' |
The Rev. Cecil Willliams, co-founder of San Francisco's GLIDE Foundation and a prominent advocate for civil rights and social justice, died Monday at the age of 94 in his home "surrounded by friends and family," according to a statement.
Over two decades, charity auctions offering the opportunity to have lunch with Warren Buffett raised $53 million for Glide.
In a telephone conversation with me Thursday, Buffett called Williams "one of the great thinkers of our times." |
Glide Foundation via Instagram |
"He took people that the world had given up on and they had given up on themselves and he never gave up on anybody...
"It shows what one person can actually do. It wasn’t because he had an IQ of 200. It wasn’t because he really had any money behind him. It wasn’t because he had any special education. He did have a religious aspect to it, but that religion was not limited to a given denomination. It was the love of his fellow man." In 1963, Williams, then in his early 30s, moved from his segregated hometown in west Texas to San Francisco, where he revitalized the Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in the city's Tenderloin district with Sunday services featuring gospel music and jazz. Eventually, its membership grew to 10,000.
Over the years, Williams and his wife, Janice Marikitamo, who died in 2021, started numerous community outreach programs. |
Buffett recalled that while his first wife, Susan Thompson Buffett, was living in San Francisco, she helped distribute meals for Glide. |
"So, she told me about him. And I thought, this guy probably isn’t for real. And I went to one church service -- and I’m an agnostic -- but I went to one church service of Cecil’s … and I watched a guy that was absolutely for real."
"What you knew was that this guy is going to come through for you, no matter what your troubles were… If you needed a place to sleep… if you needed medical help... if you needed a job, they will try to educate you for it...
"He always kept at it, and if he got discouraged, he never showed it. I never saw it and my wife never saw it… "He was a remarkable human being... It shows what one person can actually do." |
Reverend Cecil Williams greets people who received bags of groceries, provided free to individuals and families in need, in San Francisco, December 18, 2009. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith |
Berkshire unit settles commission suit, but its parent is still targeted |
Berkshire Hathaway's HomeServices of America will pay $250 million to settle lawsuits claiming real estate commissions were kept artificially high.
It's more than what any single brokerage has paid so far but much less than what plaintiffs hoped to receive.
HomeServices joins the National Association of Realtors, which agreed last month to pay $418 million and also dropped its rules on agent commissions while continuing to insist it did nothing wrong.
The unit of Berkshire Hathaway Energy is the last defendant to settle a suit brought by Missouri homeowners after a jury awarded the plaintiffs $1.8 billion in damages last October, an amount that could have been tripled under antitrust law.
A lawyer representing HomeServices told The Wall Street Journal the company was facing a potential bankruptcy if it didn't settle and said plaintiffs had been told Berkshire Hathaway itself would not bail out its unit by writing a large check to settle. |
Bloomberg via Getty Images |
Berkshire Hathaway Energy, however, is still fighting a similar suit over commissions after it was added as a defendant to national litigation early last month. Both sides made it clear today that the HomeServices deal does not cover BHE.
A HomeServices spokesperson told Reuters the settlement represents "a sole obligation of HomeServices, with no participation by any parent entity."
And a lawyer representing plaintiffs in both cases told The New York Times, "This settlement allows us to continue to pursue our nationwide case against Berkshire Hathaway Energy and a handful of large corporate brokers." |
With or without Buffett, Berkshire is 'built to last' |
Barron's looks at "What's Next for Berkshire" in a cover story for this weekend's edition.
For writer Andrew Bary, the magazine's astute Berkshire watcher, what comes next looks good because whether Buffett is running the company or not, it has been "built to last." While "questions are swirling about succession, a possible dividend, even a breakup of the company," he makes a case for buying the stock now. |
Barron's/Patrick Morales-Lee |
Bary notes that Charlie Munger's absence at next weekend's annual shareholders meeting "will only reinforce the obvious: Buffett’s time atop the conglomerate he built over six decades could end during the next few years." But, he writes, "Berkshire shares look like a good bet to match or beat the S&P 500 even after Buffett leaves the scene."
Bary notes the valuation is "appealing" at 1.5 times the company's projected March 31 book value of almost $400,000 per Class A share and 22 times expected earnings this year.
And he expects that even after Buffett, the stock "is likely to be supported by steady growth in its earnings and shareholder equity over time." |
Jury: BNSF contributed to Montana asbestos deaths, but didn't act intentionally |
A corporate predecessor of Berkshire Hathaway's BNSF freight railroad contributed to the deaths of two people exposed decades ago to asbestos in the small Montana town of Libby. On its first full day of deliberations on Monday, a federal jury awarded $4 million in compensatory damages to the estates of two plaintiffs who died in 2020. But the jury also decided the railroad did not act intentionally or with indifference, so it did not award any punitive damages.
BNSF argued that no one at the time knew there was a health hazard. |
File photo. REUTERS/Chris Helgren |
It was the first of what could be several lawsuits against BNSF, accusing it of failing to clean up vermiculite contaminated with asbestos in its rail yard in the town. The two people who died lived near the rail yard.
The lawyer for the estates told the Associated Press, "This is good news. This is the first community exposure case that will hold the railroad accountable for what they’ve done." A BNSF spokesperson called it a "very sad case," and said the company is deciding whether or not to appeal. A trial in another suit against the railroad is scheduled to begin next month.
For years, the railroad shipped the contaminated vermiculite from a nearby W.R. Grace mine. That company filed for bankruptcy in 2001 and paid $1.8 billion into a trust fund to settle future cases. In 1999, alerted by an unusually high number of deaths and illnesses among mine workers and their families, the EPA started a major cleanup.
A decade later, in a national first, it declared a public health emergency under the federal Superfund cleanup program. Health officials say several hundred have died and thousands more became ill. Due to the long incubation period for asbestos-related illnesses, the toll is expected to rise, which is likely to prompt additional lawsuits. |
California utility exec: Buffett 'got it wrong' on wildfire financial risk |
The top executive at California's largest provider of electricity disagrees with Warren Buffett's warning in his annual letter that utilities in the western U.S. "may face survival problems" if they continue to be held responsible for wildfire damages.
Bloomberg reports that during the utility's investor call on Thursday, PG&E CEO Patti Poppe said, "Frankly, I think Buffett got it wrong in California" because the state "has done the hard work to mitigate both physical and financial risk."
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A PG&E truck carrying an American Flag drives past PG&E repair trucks in Paradise, California, November 21, 2018. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage |
She cites actions taken since PG&E filed for bankruptcy in 2019 when its equipment was blamed for several fires, including the state's $21 billion wildfire insurance fund to backstop utilities, liability caps on claims, and fire prevention plans. "The citizens of California have never been safer from wildfire risk, and I think investors will soon come to believe that." |
BUFFETT AROUND THE INTERNET Some links may require a subscription | |
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HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE ARCHIVE |
Why Buffett prefers to buy entire businesses (1994) |
Warren Buffett says that if it were up to him, “we would own three times the number of businesses we own outright.” |
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CNBC wants to hear from you! Join our exclusive Insights Community and tell us what you think of CNBC's coverage by taking periodic online surveys. |
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BERKSHIRE'S TOP U.S. STOCK HOLDINGS - Apr. 26, 2024 |
Berkshire's top holdings of disclosed publicly traded stocks in the U.S., Japan, and Hong Kong, by market value, based on today's closing prices.
Holdings are as of December 31, 2023 as reported in Berkshire Hathaway’s 13F filing on February 14, 2024, except for: The full list of holdings and current market values is available from CNBC.com's Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker. |
Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to me at alex.crippen@nbcuni.com. (Sorry, but we don't forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.) If you aren't already subscribed to this newsletter, you can sign up here.
Also, Buffett's annual letters to shareholders are highly-recommended reading. There are collected here on Berkshire's website. -- Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch |
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